Friday 26 / April / 2024
Muscat: Your resident card will become the most important document in the Sultanate with the need for a passport becoming minimum as part of the new reforms taken by the Royal Oman Police to streamline the process.
From now on, residence visas won’t be stamped on to your passports, as authorities ramp up services offered to residents in the country.
Officials said it is now sufficient to present the residence card upon arrival at the ports of the Sultanate instead of your visa page on your passport as was previously the case in the Sultanate of Oman.
Your Oman resident cards will also be considered as proof of residence.
An official from the Royal Oman Police (ROP), spoke exclusively to Times of Oman, saying: “As we know, the governments of the world turn to the electronic system in their transactions and services in general, including the Sultanate of Oman, where the visa was previously stamped on the passports of residents, but this system has now been cancelled, as the residency card is sufficient to clarify all the resident’s data, and this comes within the framework of the government digital transformation.”
According to a new amendment to the residence visa rule, the stamping of visas on expatriates’ passports has not become mandatory. The residence card is sufficient for visa purposes, according to the ROP.
An official source from the ROP told Times of Oman that earlier visa stamping was done on the passports of expatriates but that provision has been done away with. Currently, that is not required to be stored in the system and the residence card is sufficient, the official said.
